The FCC is about to give massive internet service providers the power to divide the internet. It is at risk of becoming unrecognizable. A vital global utility that has been a boon to creative and economic freedom for people around the world may be turned into a twisted land of tolls and corporate control.

The stakes are high. The internet now touches every town, every city, and every single one of us — whether we use it or not. Those who control the network control the future.

Texts between two senior FBI officials involved in both the probe of Hillary Clinton’s emails and possible connections between Trump associates and Russia show the pair frequently discussed their political views, their intense dislike of candidate Donald Trump and their fear he might win.

A review of the texts between senior FBI agent Peter Strzok and senior FBI lawyer Lisa Page were sent to lawmakers Tuesday night. The texts are the subject of an ethics investigation by the Justice Department’s inspector general, and they show the senior officials repeatedly offering harsh opinions about political figures. Among many other comments, the two called Trump “an idiot.”

In January of this year, after the infamous Trump/Russia “dossier” had been made public through news reports and a full publication on BuzzFeed News, we learned that Sen. John McCain was at least partially responsible for putting the information in the hands of the FBI. In a statement to Fox News, McCain tried to downplay his role in creating or disseminating the dossier, which has since proven to be a work of fiction developed, paid for, and peddled by the DNC and the Hillary Clinton campaign.

In an appearance on Glenn Beck’s radio program, the former Fox News host made a sensational claim. According to O’Reilly, his team of investigators discovered a tape in which a lawyer offers a woman $200,000 to “accuse Donald Trump of untoward behavior.”

Here’s what he says: “It exists. We have urged the person who has the tape to hand it over to the U.S. attorney, because my investigative team believes there are three separate crimes on the audio tape.”

O’Reilly then answered if he’ll release the tape himself. Here’s what he said: “I may have to go to the U.S. attorney myself. I don’t want to have to do that and inject myself into the story, but I had my lawyer listen to the tape. … There are at least three crimes on the tape. So as a citizen, I may have to do this.”

Controversy swirled over the mechanics of the Alabama Senate election after the state supreme court intervened at the eleventh hour to give election officials a green light not to preserve electronic ballot records that could form the basis of a recount.

A court in Montgomery, the state capital, issued an injunction on Monday afternoon ordering election officials around the state to preserve digital images of the ballots cast by Alabama voters in the hard-fought contest between controversial Republican Roy Moore and Democrat Doug Jones.

But the supreme court stayed that injunction almost immediately following a protest lodged by Alabama’s chief election official, the secretary of state, John Merrill. Voting rights experts denounced the ruling as a blow to transparency in a state that already has a flawed vote recount procedure and a somewhat checkered history of questionable election outcomes that the state’s senior officials and courts have allowed to go unchallenged.

Text messages between FBI officials Peter Strzok and Lisa Page in 2016 that were obtained by Fox News on Tuesday refer to then-candidate Donald Trump as a "loathsome human" and "an idiot."

More than 10,000 texts between Strzok and Page were being reviewed by the Justice Department after Strzok was removed from Special Counsel Robert Mueller's Russia probe after it was revealed that some of them contained anti-Trump content.

The messages were sent during the 2016 campaign and contain discussions about various candidates. On March 2, Strzok texted Page that someone "asked me who I’d vote for, guessed [Ohio Gov. John] Kasich."

When James Comey testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee, he would not actually say that he believed President Trump obstructed justice when he said he “hoped” the investigation of Michael Flynn would end. But Comey said he clearly believed Trump was trying to influence his decisions.

Brussels is set for booze-up bonanza after the European Parliament announced it is renovating the MEPs’ restaurant and lounge – and to make up for the inconvenience has built a new bar costing €200,000. Refurbishment works in the Altiero Spinelli building will begin in January and last for six months.

Anger is mounting in the UK against billionaire Richard Branson, who successfully sued the cash-starved National Health Service (NHS) for £328,000 of taxpayer money. Almost 70,000 people have signed a petition calling for him to return the funds.

The petition reads: “When the NHS is under severe financial pressure, it cannot afford to lose this money. Richard Branson, however, with an estimated personal wealth of over £3.5 billion, can manage perfectly comfortably without it." It urges Branson to apologize, return the money, and to make a personal commitment that his company, Virgin Care, will never again sue the NHS after losing out on a contract.

‘Triggered’ is such a weird insult, isn’t it? ‘Sorry, snowflake, did I trigger you? Did I make you feel an .
emotion in response to an event? Did my awful actions make you react with sadness or empathy, like you’re supposed to when you’re not made of pure evil? Oh, I do beg your pardon… Did my behaviour cause you to retaliate in a way that might suggest you’re somehow human? Cucked!!’

People who delight in causing offence are so tedious. Why not just play nice? Surely a world of happiness is better than constant misery? At this point I must declare a conflict of interest: I like being happy, which is why I promote happiness. I am in the pay of Big Joy. Bear this in mind whenever you read my columns. It’s actually why I wasn’t allowed to stand as a member of parliament: the ombudsman told me that my belief in making the world a nicer place was incompatible with the regular cash rewards from the arms trade.

Doug Jones on Tuesday became the first Democrat in a generation to win a Senate seat in Alabama, beating Republican Roy Moore amid a firestorm of allegations that the GOP candidate had sexually abused teens.

Moore, however, refused to concede Tuesday night.

"When the vote is this close ... it's not over," Moore told supporters after Jones declared victory.

The results are nothing short of an embarrassment for President Donald Trump and a disaster for Republicans in Washington as the reliably red state of Alabama elected its first Democratic senator since the early 1990s.

It’s worth noting that Putin’s decision to withdrawal Russian personnel stands in stark contrast to the US, which appears to be moving toward a semi-permanent air presence in the battle-torn, Iran-allied country.

President Trump stole our Christmas. And he did it standing in front of Christmas trees.

In what was an unusually polished speech (for him), President Trump announced the U.S. recognizes Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and has plans to relocate the U.S. embassy to there from Tel Aviv. We sat on our couch watching, our hearts pounding and our fists clenching, wondering whether it was ignorance, lunacy or plain hubris that drove him to make this announcement.

How can one man decide to take our historical capital away and give it to another country? How can he do that without acknowledging the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who live in Jerusalem? Who live in the city of their birth without access to services, without basic human rights, who live unacknowledged? What happens to them?

The US economy is caught in a trap. That trap is the Department of Defense: an increasingly sticky wicket that relies on an annual, trillion-dollar redistribution of government-collected wealth. In fact, it's the biggest "big government" program on the planet, easily beating out China's People's Liberation Army in both size and cost. It is not only the "nation's largest employer," with 2.867 million people currently on the payroll, but it also provides government benefits to 2 million retirees and their family members. And it actively picks private sector winners by targeting billions of dollars to an elite group of profit-seeking contractors.

The top five overall recipients collectively pulled in $109.5 billion in FY2016, and their cohorts consistently dominate the government's list of top 100 contractors. They reap this yearly largesse through a Rube-Goldberg-like system of influence peddlers, revolving doors and wasteful taxpayer-funded boondoggles. Finally, it is all justified by a deadly feedback loop of perpetual warfare that is predicated on a predictable supply of blowback.

But this belligerent cash machine doesn't just produce haphazard interventions and shady partnerships>>>

***
The post-Cold War era has seen a continuation of a long global trend toward greater peace and stability, lower rates of conflict, and zero great power wars. More peace and diminishing threats have merely enhanced the remarkable security already enjoyed by the United States thanks to its geographic isolation, weak neighbors, unparalleled economic and military power, and its nuclear deterrent.

But America doesn’t act as if it is safe. Instead, we have a hyper-interventionist foreign policy. Over the last century, according to the Rand Corporation, “there was only one brief period – the four years immediately after U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam – during which the United States did not engage in any interventions abroad.” Indeed, “the number and scale of U.S. military interventions rose rapidly in the aftermath of the Cold War, just as [rates of global] conflict began to subside.”

According to data from the Congressional Research Service, the United States has engaged in more military interventions in the past 28 years than it had in the previous 190 years of its existence.*>>>

***
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Tuesday it was not his place to comment on Trump's actions, but added: "In any case, everything which is published from his authorised Twitter account is perceived by Moscow as his official statement.

"Naturally, it is reported to Putin along with other information about official statements by politicians," Peskov said, adding that Putin was not a Twitter user himself.

President Trump’s announcement stating that Jerusalem is the capital of Israel and directing the State Department to begin moving the embassy sparked anger and protests across the world.

One would think that Democrats would be be jumping at the chance to hammer Trump for his reckless plans that violate international law and needlessly add more fuel to the fires raging in the Middle East.

Certainly, the international community has come out with strong rebukes. The condemnations from America’s allies in the Muslim world have been stunning. The state of Jordan called it “nuts” and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) said it was a gift to “radicals and extremists.” The Saudis described it as an “unjustified and irresponsible.” The Iraqi government demanded that the US reverse its decision. Turkey called it a “red line for Muslims.” The European Union representative expressed her opposition, as did many head of states of European nations.
***
Back at home, however,>>>

Lack of accountability on the whereabouts of the US troops was not very surprising, Paul believes, as it had become a “routine thing” over the past years. The situation, however, has alarmingly worsened during the first months of Donald Trump’s presidency.

“The President had stated he wants to keep everything under his vest, because he doesn’t want people [to] know, and he believes its proper policy,” Paul said. “The Constitution says he’s not allowed to send troops around the world without the people and the Congress knowing about it.”

Thousands of previously disenfranchised Americans are casting their ballot for the first time across Alabama today.

In May of this year, Gov. Kay Ivey (R) signed the Definition of Moral Turpitude Act into law, effectively enfranchising former felons previously barred by the Alabama constitution from voting. A similar effort was made by Democrats in Virginia this year, granting tens of thousands of Virginians the right to vote for the first time in November.

The Alabama special election has been mired scandal involving the number sexual misconduct allegations against the Republican candidate, Judge Roy Moore. This, however, is a bright light in what was often a disturbing campaign.

This is the fourth part of an investigative series concerning the troubling matter of Wall Street crimes protected by federal agents switching sides to protect their secret buddies’ “bizness” schemes by conflict of interests and “revolving doors.”

In this segment, we’ll look into apparent acts of federal agents’ incompetence, willful blindness and observable acts of clear duplicity.

Today we will be looking at what are known as Deferred Prosecution Agreements. (“Defers”) aren’t even slaps on the wrists, because those fines are paid by the stockholders and not Wall Street executives who should be convicted...

On Monday a federal judge challenged the U.S. government to justify the continued imprisonment of an American citizen who has been denied access to a lawyer for over three months.

Washington D.C. - U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan has expressed skepticism and frustration over the U.S. government's arguments for detaining an American citizen for three months. On Monday, at the latest hearing in the case of American Civil Liberties Union v. Mattis, the Justice Department argued that the court had no authority to rule on wartime detentions by U.S. military in an overseas conflict zone. Judge Chutkan seemed to lean in favor of the ACLU's argument that the man should have access to a lawyer, which he has been denied thus far...

Over the past 10 days we've learned a lot about FBI agent Peter Strzok, a man who very likely would have lived the remainder of his life in relative obscurity as an FBI counterintelligence agent but for his sudden dismissal from Special Counsel Mueller's "Russian Collusion" investigation.

As we noted on December 2nd (see: Mueller's Top FBI Agent Probing Clinton Emails, Russian-Collusion "Removed" After Anti-Trump Texts Found), Strzok's life became far more complicated when it was revealed that his dismissal from Mueller's team was linked to the discovery of multiple "anti-Trump text messages" shared with a colleague...a colleague with whom he happened to be having an extramarital affair.

FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe abruptly cancelled his closed door testimony in front of the House Intelligence Committee as news emerged that the wife of Senior DOJ official Bruce Ohr worked for Fusion GPS, the opposition research firm which assembled the infamous "Trump dossier." Ohr was demoted last week after allegedly trying to conceal his contacts with Fusion.

If devastating wildfires sweep across California again next year—not unlikely considering even Governor Jerry Brown has called it the “new normal”—the hardest hit may not be eligible for the same support as they are this year, thanks to the GOP’s fast-moving tax bill.

As Congress pushes full steam ahead with its controversial plan to cut taxes (mostly for the wealthy and corporations), analysts are finally getting a chance to look at the impact such drastic measures would have on the majority of Americans. One major issue is how the plan would limit taxpayers’ ability to write off damages from future disasters.

Almost two dozen senior Israel Defense Force service members, Defense Ministry officials and technology company employees were put in handcuffs on Tuesday for allegedly stealing $28 million, or 100 million new Israeli shekels, from the government, the Times of Israel reported.
The scheme to steal taxpayer funds allegedly involved the suspects billing Israel's Defense Ministry for telecom projects that never happened or were only partially complete.

Even though hundreds of death threats called into Jewish centers last year were shown to be carried out by an Israeli-American teenager living in Israel, the House just voted 402-2 in favor of the "Combating Anti-Semitism Act of 2017" to expand hate crime laws and penalties against "religiously affiliated institutions."

The only two congressmen to vote against the act were libertarian republicans Justin Amash and Thomas Massie who have actual principles and care about the Constitution.

Well, here it comes. The desperate Democrats are getting set up now for their final push in their weak attempt to bounce Pres. Trump out of office. They have gotten rid of two of their most problematic members of Congress in hopes that this will set a sufficient precedent in the public mind too then use it against Trump.

SHARE THIS ARTICLE WITH YOUR SOCIAL MEDIA

Sadly, the Bitcoin system does not allow me to see who is sending me bitcoin donations, so I cannot thank you personally. I must thank you all collectively here. Thank you for your kind support of our work!

If you do not see the current show, empty your browser cache and reload.

IF THE ABOVE PODCAST LINK DOES NOT WORK, TRY...

Video

If you do not see the current show, empty your browser cache and reload.